Desai-Maoist Insurgency in MS

7/31/2019 Desai-Maoist Insurgency in MS

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/desai-maoist-insurgency-in-ms 1/17

Anti-‘anti-witchcraft’ and the Maoist insurgency

in rural Maharashtra, India

Amit Desai

Published online: 27 November 2009Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract Dealing effectively with malignant mystical attack is an important

concern in central India. This paper examines the ways in which the connections

and conflicts between the Maoist movement, the police, and marginalised villagers

in the state of Maharashtra, India, has led to a crisis in the identification of mal-

feasants such as witches. In response to the presence of the Maoist insurgency, state

actors have become more involved in people’s lives than ever before. Police and

others attempt to regulate activities such as witch-detecting and ghost-finding,which they regard as evidence of ‘backwardness’. In many respects of course, the

Maoist movement is itself a commentary on ‘backwardness’. The paper therefore

offers an insight into the lives of people involved in and affected by the circulation

of this concept and the forms of transformation that result.

Keywords India Á Maoism Á Witchcraft Á Police Á Adivasi Á Maharashtra

Introduction

Casting an oblique look sometimes illuminates facets of social life that are

otherwise obscured. So, rather than subject the Maoist movement to a full-frontal

examination, I want to trace some of the consequences of its emergence for people

living in one of the many areas in which it operates. My principal concern here is to

examine how dealing with witchcraft and sorcery has become progressively more

difficult for people in an Adivasi (or ‘tribal’) area of eastern Maharashtra, in central

India, as a consequence of the state’s reaction to the Naxalite insurgency.

The presence of the Maoists (also known as Naxalites) in Maharashtra since atleast the late 1980s, primarily in the easternmost districts of Gondia and Gadchiroli,

A. Desai (&)

London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

e-mail: [email protected]

123

Dialect Anthropol (2009) 33:423–439

DOI 10.1007/s10624-009-9135-4



has made the state more urgently involved in people’s lives than before; its

personnel and policies have come closer to villagers both in fact and in imagination.

As the police attempt to tackle what they see as Adivasi ‘backwardness’, which they

believe leads the latter to support the Maoists, they attack so-called ‘superstitious’

practices such as witch-finding and ghost-detecting. In combination with othersocial and historical processes not immediately connected with the effect of the

Maoist insurgency, this leaves people and villages that are troubled by malignant

mystical attack without effective recourse to the remedies readily used in the past.

I conducted fieldwork in and around the small village of Markakasa1 in Gondia

district from 2002 to 2004, and then again for a short time in 2005. My research

project did not initially account for the Naxalite presence. But I became aware very

quickly that it was a major factor in any social transformation underway in the area.

Though I recognised its importance, the Naxalite movement did not become the

focus of my study, hence the sideways nature of my gaze. It certainly interested me,but I felt concerned about posing too many direct questions, always fearing a

nocturnal knock at my door. Villagers asked me if I would like to meet some

Naxalites, and perhaps interview them; keen as I was, I realised that my position vis-

a-vis the local police might become difficult if ever they discovered that the foreign

researcher had been fraternising with the enemy. My principal research objective

was to understand why a particular Hindu devotional sect ( panth) had become so

popular in recent years. I discovered that people joined it in order to combat

incurable illness caused by witchcraft or magic. Since the level of witchcraft had not

increased dramatically, the question posed itself: why was this sort of mysticalattack becoming more difficult to fight? The effect of the Naxalite insurgency

suggested possible avenues of inquiry.

While the bulk of this article is therefore concerned with plotting the connections

between the response to the insurgency and the impediments to dealing with

witchcraft, the increased popularity of Hindu devotional sects has its own

consequences for local society, which I examine briefly towards the end of the

essay. I begin with an account of the visit of a powerful witch-detecting deity called

Angadev to a village neighbouring Markakasa.

The Angadev

The principal weapon a village as a collective has at its disposal in combating

witches (tohni) and ghosts (bhut ) is to request the services of an Angadev (or in

Gondi, Angapen2), a powerful Gond (adivasi) deity that is adept at detecting

troublemakers and unquiet spirits. The Angadev is called to uncover the causes of

suffering felt by the village as a whole, such as in cases of illness or death of a large

number of young people. Inviting the Angadev to one’s village is extremely

expensive, and all villagers need to be agreed in order to contribute money. The

villagers have to bear the cost of transport for the deity and its attendants, animals

1 All personal names and most village names are pseudonyms.2 Foreign words and phrases in italics are Chhattisgarhi for the most part.

424 A. Desai

123



(goats, pigs, chickens) for sacrifice, feasts and alcohol. Depending on how long the

Angadev stays, the whole exercise can cost between Rs. 20,000 and Rs. 50,000, an

enormous sum of money.3

Though I had heard descriptions of the Angadev from Markakasa people, its visit

to the village of Kondenar, 3 km away, meant I was able to see it for myself. TheAngadev resembles a wooden bier, comprising three long, thick wooden poles

crossed by two smaller pieces that connect the others across its width. The middle

length of wood is said to be imbued with power (shakti) and is carved at the front

with the head of an animal—in the case known to me, of a horse. The latter is

specifically referred to as the pen or dev (god). The Angadev was decorated with a

large number of peacock feathers at the places where the length and the width poles

crossed; the god itself (the head) was painted bright orange, and the poles were

black. This particular Angadev had come from its shrine 40 km away to the south,

accompanied by several ritual specialists (baiga). The Angadev is carried by fourbearers, who say they are driven by the dev to places where witches live or ghosts

are to be found. The landscape is no obstacle for the deity: Angadev has been known

to take their bearers through lakes, into wells, far out to threshing floors and up onto

the roofs of houses in search of bhut and tonhi.

There are three principal stages of the Angadev’s visit to a village. The first is the

binding of the village’s boundaries (sima bandhna), whereby the Angadev travels

the length of the borders, stopping several times along the way while the attendant

baigas sacrifice animals to it. The binding is done in order to prevent residents

leaving the village while the Angadev is in residence. Informants described it as apowerful spell that would kill or harm anyone trying to leave.

The second, and central, stage is the detection of witches and ghosts ( tonhi-bhut

khojna). The Angadev goes from house to house searching for wrongdoers. When it

detects a witch,4 it stands in front of him and knocks him with one of the poles that

make up its bier. This action is variously interpreted either as a simple identification,

or as the pronouncement of divine punishment, which in some cases leads to death.

The third and final stage is ‘play’ (khel; karsana [Gondi]) and is the

entertainment aspect of the visit: the Angadev puts on a show. A crowd of

spectators gather in the village square, and as the drums beat the Angadev rushes

around swaying and dancing, sometimes bumping into members of the audience.

Here, however, there is no risk of being accused of witchcraft: the Angadev is

merely ‘playing’. At the same time, induced by the drumming, the attendant baigas

and certain other people, both villagers and visitors, begin to get possessed by the

gods (dev jhupna), who come to ‘play’ alongside the Angadev. Men possessed roll

around on the ground, jump into the crowd or flay themselves with barbed chains

and all the while the Angadev is running and swaying.5

3

This converts to approximately £250 and £650 respectively. The daily wage for a (male) farm laboureris Rs. 25 (30 p).4 Technically a witch can be male (tonha) or female (tonhi), but the former term is less common in daily

usage than the latter, which is often used to refer to male witches too.5 Gell (1980) has an interesting discussion of the Angadev’s characteristic movement in his analysis of

vertigo and dizziness in Hindu-Gond ritual practices.

Anti-‘anti-witchcraft’ and the Maoist insurgency in rural Maharashtra, India 425

123



Of these three stages of an Angadev visit, I was only able to witness the final one.

But this was not through lack of trying. Though I had confirmed the dates of the visit

on a number of occasions, and the Kondenar people I spoke to led me to believe that

I would be able to witness the detection stage as well as the ‘play’ stage, they had in

fact misled me and other ‘outsiders’ (people from other villages) and given us all thewrong dates. When my companions and I arrived in Kondenar at the appointed time,

we were told to our dismay that the first two stages had been carried out during the

night when only the Kondenar villagers were present; all that was left now was the

element of spectacle. To the extent that we can learn a great deal about a given

social situation by examining that which is lied about or left unsaid, that the

Kondenar villagers had done this was interesting. Why would they lie?

Naturally, I was a little put out when I discovered that I would not be seeing any

witch-finding and I asked Soma, a Kondenar leader, to explain why I (and others) had

been misled. The reason, he said, was that the activities of the Angadev in Kondenarwere a secret matter, and secrecy needed to be maintained in relation to two groups:

people from other villages and the police. The concern with keeping things from

people from other villages was bound up with potential stains on honour and

reputation. Soma’s desire to keep the Angadev’s visit secret from the police is more

complex and is indicative of the type of impediments that exist to combating

witchcraft and magic at the village level. The problem was that Kondenar had been

refused the required police authorisation to invite the deity. In the particular case of the

Angadev, villagers seek assurances from the police that those who accuse others of

witchcraft will not be subject to criminal investigation. The villagers in returnundertake not to use violence in dealing with a suspected witch. Essentially, the police

are asked to adopt a ‘hands-off’ attitude, and the villagers are given control over

witchcraft accusations and their consequences.6 Just as the police refused permission

for Kondenar, so it was denied about 6 months later for another village, Bodalkasa,

about 10 km from Markakasa. Young people there had been falling ill and dying at an

unusually high rate, perhaps eight in as many months, and no medical explanation had

proved satisfactory to Bodalkasa’s inhabitants. While negotiations were taking place

with the guardians of an Angadev in Bastar, the police refused the villagers’ request.

On learning this, the Angadev guardians declared that they would not attend a village

that had not received official permission. Police approval seemed to be increasingly

difficult to come by. In the past, the Angadev would come and go, and asking for

permission was just a formality; in most cases the village would not bother to inform

the authorities at all. The police were stationed far from the village and visited

infrequently. Why were the police no longer granting permission for Angadev visits?

The Maoists and the state: a closer presence

Over the past 15 years, the eye of the state has become increasingly keen in this

relatively neglected and under-governed part of India. This is largely a result of the

6 See Macdonald (2004: appendix) for an example of just such an agreement between police and

villagers in plains Chhattisgarh.

426 A. Desai

123



presence and growth of the Maoist movement. The police (as representatives of the

state) have come physically closer to villages such as Markakasa and Kondenar than

ever before, and bring with them an alternative world view that is unwilling to

tolerate practices such as the hunting of witches and ghosts that reek of superstition

or ‘blind-faith’ (andha-shraddha), and are anti-thetical to their idea of whatconstitutes ‘modern India’. In her recent study of witchcraft accusations and

violence in neighbouring Chhattisgarh, Macdonald (2004) examines the differences

that exist between the higher and lower ranks of the Indian police force regarding

belief in these types of being: the former subscribe to a ‘modernist’ vision, which

takes a dim view of belief in witches and magic, regarding it as a throwback and

part and parcel of ‘traditional India’; the latter, on the other hand, are more willing

to countenance suspicions of magical activity and largely share in the belief as to

their existence (131). Though her argument is entirely convincing and applies

equally well to police in the area of my fieldwork, it is premised on the fact that, inmuch of plains Chhattisgarh (and I suspect in rural India more generally), the lower

ranks of the police are drawn from similar backgrounds to the citizenry they serve.

In the adivasi districts of eastern Maharashtra, however, and particularly in the

adivasi dominated areas of southern Gondia and Gadchiroli districts, there is a sharp

difference between the lower echelons of state administration (police, teachers,

forest officials) and the local population. Recruitment of the latter into the former,

though increasing,7 is at much lower levels than in other non-adivasi districts, and

thus policemen and others are overwhelmingly ‘outsiders’, people who regard

themselves, and are regarded by locals, as coming from ‘a different area’ with ‘adifferent atmosphere’ (va ta varan).8 Despite Macdonald’s evidence that objectively

witchcraft is not simply an Adivasi issue and that it is just as prevalent in much of

non-Adivasi plains Chhattisgarh, the fact of the matter is that members of the local

bureaucracy and police in Adivasi areas do, as a matter of subjective understanding,

believe that it is more of a concern in these ‘backward’ areas where they work. This

attitude predominates regardless of lower-level policemen’s own beliefs in

witchcraft and magic. Confronted with people paradigmatically regarded as

backward and superstitious, the policeman’s response is to deny any similarity.

The Naxalite movement began in the late 1960s in eastern India and exploded

into large-scale violence between 1970 and 1971 across several states (Singh 1995:

133). Following the suppression of this initial rebellion, a new Maoist organisation

called the People’s War Group (PWG) emerged in south-central India in the early

1980s. During the course of that decade, it spread its area of operation northwards

into eastern Maharashtra and southern Chhattisgarh (erstwhile Madhya Pradesh),

7 From what I could gather anecdotally, the mid-1990s saw an expansion in the number of police jobs

reserved for those in the Scheduled Tribe (or Adivasi) category, though this has since slowed quite

considerably.8 I was unable to obtain official statistics on the percentages of policemen who were ‘locals’ as opposed

to ‘outsiders’. Based on my own interviews with junior policemen; however, I would suggest that no more

than five percent of the personnel in either the local police station or the armed outpost nearer Markakasa

were from Gondia or Gadchiroli Districts. Most were from other parts of Vidarbha (eastern Maharashtra)

or from western Maharashtra. Conversely, of the three Adivasi men from Markakasa who were

policemen, two were stationed in non-Adivasi areas in the northern part of the District.


123



both predominantly Adivasi areas. By the early 1990s, Naxalite violence peaked in

Maharashtra and by then the PWG had gained access to landmines as well as guns

(ibid: 133-4). The turn of the century has seen a renewed growth in Naxalite activity

in Maharashtra, followed by increased police crackdowns, with scores of policemen,

civilians and insurgents killed every year.9

2004 2005 2006 (to June)

Incidents (Naxalite) 84 94 56

Civilians killed 9 29 24

Policemen killed 6 24 1

Though the figures look less horrifying than those for Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh,

it must be remembered that the Naxalites are seriously active in only two districts of

Maharashtra—Gondia and Gadchiroli—out of a total of thirty-five and therefore

over a much smaller area with a smaller population when compared to other

affected states. Both districts have been designated by the central government as

‘severely-affected’ (the highest rating) by Naxalite activity since at least the early

1990s (Singh 1995: 132). In 2004, the PWG merged with another important

Naxalite faction, the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), which operates principally

in Bihar and Jharkhand, to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Their

objective has been the creation of a Compact Revolutionary Zone stretching fromthe Nepalese border in the north through the spine of central India to Tamil Nadu in

the south.

While the Naxalites declare that their struggle is against the perceived oppression

of the Indian state and its agents, and their ultimate aim is the liberation of the

adivasi peasantry from a neo-colonial yoke, the growth in Naxalite activity has

succeeded, at least in this part of India, in bringing the state closer to its citizens.

Shantha Sinha (1989) observes the same process in rural Andhra Pradesh where, as

a result of greater and closer police and administrative contact in the wake of the

Naxalite insurgency, ‘‘people for the first time realised that their standard of livingdepended not, as they had so far believed, on the local landlord or money lender but

on a much larger and infinitely more powerful entity—the State’’ (317). An example

of this in Markakasa was the construction of a new network of roads in the area by

the Border Roads Organisation (BRO).

The Border Roads Organisation

One of the largest public works projects undertaken by the state in this area in recent

years was the building, repairing and tarring of the road network. The work was

carried out by a central government agency, the BRO, a corps of military engineers.

9 Source: Parliament Q & A Home Ministry, 2nd August 2006. See http://164.100.24.219/annex/208/

AU952.htm. I have no figures for Naxal deaths.

428 A. Desai

123

http://164.100.24.219/annex/208/AU952.htm

http://164.100.24.219/annex/208/AU952.htm

http://164.100.24.219/annex/208/AU952.htm

http://164.100.24.219/annex/208/AU952.htm



Renowned throughout India for its work on building roads in the most inaccessible

and dangerous parts of Kashmir and the insurgency-hit states of the North-East, and

along India’s tense borders with Pakistan, China and Bangladesh, the BRO was

contracted by the Government of Maharashtra to build a network of all-weather

roads in the Naxalite-affected districts of Gondia and Gadchiroli. A network of tarred roads would allow better access for police and security forces in areas where

rebels were known to operate, and also minimise the risk of landmines, which can

be hidden more effectively on dirt or stone roads. Moreover, as a military

organisation, the BRO had personnel at its disposal to guard the construction work

from attack by rebels opposed to the project.10 The work was carried out in phases

and is still going on in both districts and across the state border in Chhattisgarh.

While the BRO supplied the machinery, materials and engineers, labour was

recruited from the areas in which the roads were built. Many Markakasa villagers,

both women and men, were employed as labourers on the road-building work duringthe early phases of construction at various periods between 1995 and 1998.

The BRO left a lasting impression on those in Markakasa who worked for it. It

paid its labourers generously, and it was seen as a time in which most people were

awash with cash. The monthly wage was Rs. 2,200, more than double the amount

that could be earned on ‘ordinary’ government works projects, and three times the

wage of a farm labourer. When payday came, everyone would receive crisp five

hundred rupee notes; for some it was the first time they had seen a denomination

that high. Many workers bought consumer goods such as cycles and radios, or a new

pair of bulls. It was during the time of the BRO that people began to get a taste foreating snacks and drinking tea in roadside cafes, and indeed it was at this time that

Markakasa’s first paan and tea stall opened. Everyone smoked sophisticated and

expensive cigarettes (‘Bristol’), not the cheap, rustic and more popular Indian bidi.

It was not only the generous wages that people remembered about the BRO but

also the style and efficiency of the operation. The project represented a different

‘state’ to the one which they had had experience of. The machinery the BRO

brought with them was impressive, quite unlike the equipment used by the local

Public Works Department (PWD). The engineers and officers, who, I was told, all

spoke English with one another, did not tolerate complaints from farmers whose

fields bordered the road, and when they realised that supplies were taking too long

in coming from elsewhere, they established a cement factory close to their

operations. The roads built by the BRO are constantly praised and compared

favourably with those built by the district PWD: the latter’s roads begin to

disintegrate after a couple of monsoons, because of the poor materials used by the

contractors who cut costs in order to line their own pockets. That sort of corruption

did not go on with the BRO, I was told, and as a consequence their roads are of

better quality. Importantly, the presence of the BRO represents the militarisation of

the area: road building here was explicitly about security rather than development.11

In short, the BRO represented not only a different kind of state, but also a very

10 Nevertheless, on several occasions, machinery was attacked and set alight, and an elaborate plot was

hatched to kill the chief engineer on his visit to one of the sites.11 I am grateful to Nandini Sundar for pointing this out.


123



generous and powerful one, and the project has continued to have great symbolic

value. As I examine later in this section, the engagement of the police has been far

more striking and closely involved with the issue of witchcraft.

The Maoists in Markakasa

The Naxalites12 are a definite presence in Markakasa and the immediate area and

have been active here since at least the early 1990s. Small squads visit the village

regularly, going principally to those (Gond) households where they know they will

be fed and watered, and also visit the village shop after hours to buy soap and

biscuits. The villagers tell me that the Maoists themselves prefer Gond households

and regard all-Gond villages as less threatening. In comparison with neighbouring

villages, therefore, Markakasa was regarded as less attractive because the presence

of several castes and the concomitant village factionalism was said to compromiseNaxalite security. Nevertheless, villagers observe the bandhs (‘stoppages’) in July

and December every year that commemorate the Naxalite fallen and which last for

several days. During this time, called Shaheed Saptha (Martyrs’ Week), they cannot

work in their fields or drive bullock carts. General village-wide meetings were

seldom called, and not, to the best of my knowledge, during the time of fieldwork

(2002–2004). In 2001, a Maoist squad dragged a Markakasa man to the village

square in the middle of the night, and beat him very badly in front of the other

villagers. He was suspected of being an informant to the forest guard about the

villagers’ illegal timber-hunting forays into the jungle; someone felt aggrievedenough to call in the insurgents.

Every village in the area has a story like this to tell, and in many the Naxalites

have killed local people, including suspected informants and elected village council

members. The insurgents have also targeted local state officials and property. In

January 2003, a couple of months into fieldwork, two policemen were blown up by a

landmine on their way to investigate a Naxalite arson attack on a timber depot

15 km from Markakasa. The following month, a new, as yet unoccupied

government building located 20 km to the south was attacked and burnt to the

ground. In May 2005, a landmine killed seven policemen in a jeep outside a village

10 km away. Information about Markakasa people’s direct participation in the

Naxalite movement was murky at best, but it seemed that only one person in the

village, a woman, had herself been a Naxalite and left the movement a number of

years ago; another had been a regular cook for a squad, which visited her natal

village.

This is an area, therefore, of longstanding Maoist operation but where physical

violence has generally been deployed by the insurgents in a targeted fashion against

government officials such as policemen and forest guards, and those regarded as

working for them. While most people I spoke to clearly feared the Naxalites’

capacity for violence, it was constantly impressed upon me that they were not

12 The villagers used a variety of terms to refer to the Naxalites: naxalwadi (‘naxal-ist’); jangalwalle

(‘those of the forest’); lal salaam walle (‘red salute people’); or simply by saying o-man (‘that lot’). They

were also referred to non-verbally by making the hand gesture for a gun.

430 A. Desai

123



whimsical or unpredictable: they would issue several warnings to you and if, after

these warnings, you failed to comply with their request, then you ought to be

concerned. Other accounts of Naxalite activity in India (e.g. Shah 2006) have

highlighted their role in promoting or diffusing existing disputes in a given village.

Though day-to-day dispute resolution processes seemed unaffected by theirpresence in the area, Markakasa people were certainly aware of the Naxalite effect.

Village dispute resolution bodies deliberate and pronounce in the shadow of the law

and of the Naxalites; if their judgements are seen to lack legitimacy, equity or

authority, there is the risk that disaffected parties will contact the insurgents for

assistance.

Just as the relationship between the police and the local populace has changed in

many ways due to the Naxalite presence (discussed in more detail below), there is

also an awareness among villagers that forest guards can no longer harass them to

the extent they did 20 years; the latter are far more careful to demand reasonablebribes to overlook villagers’ access to timber and firewood, and avoid antagonising

several villagers at any one time. The guard with responsibility for Markakasa told

me that the Naxalites arranged to meet him soon after he was posted to the area and

warned him to behave ‘respectfully’ if he wished to avoid incurring their

displeasure. In fact, many low-level beat forest officials are in fairly regular contact

with the Naxalites (or vice versa), in a way that would be unthinkable for

policemen.13

Police engagement and the problem of witch identification

In 2003, in response to increased Naxalite activity in the area, the police established

an Armed Outpost (AOP) in Ramtola, a village 4 km from Markakasa. AOPs are

heavily fortified camps, containing between 25 and 50 policemen led by a Police

Sub-Inspector (PSI). AOPs have none of the principal functions of police stations;

their sole purpose is to provide a base closer to the forests and villages where

Naxalites operate, and from where patrols can be carried out more easily. In an

average week, the police patrol for about 3 days, in a squad of approximately 15

men, during which time they spend the nights out of base either in the forest or in a

village. While I lived in Markakasa, a band of heavily armed policemen in fatigues,

looking more like soldiers, would often arrive in the late hours of the evening, use

the house of a villager as a base to eat their meal and then retire either to an

abandoned threshing floor or to the roof of the school, heading into the forest in the

middle of the night. The patrol would then reappear in the village a day or two later

on their way back to the AOP.

Not only are the police more visible to villagers than ever before, they are also

more accessible and less threatening.14 The policy appears to be one of engagement

13 Though I have no direct evidence of this, and was loath to investigate, I suspect, following Shah

(2006), that the Naxalites in and around Markakasa operate a ‘market of protection’ over the valuable

timber in the forest, in collaboration with forest officials and contractors.14 Only up to a point, however. Markakasa villagers were well aware of how the police could behave.

While I was conducting fieldwork, an ‘encounter’ took place in a village 15 km to the north and a man,


123



with the local populace in order to diminish the attraction of the Naxalite

movement. People themselves say that, even 20 years ago, everyone would either

run into their homes or flee to the forest on hearing of the arrival of police in the

village. The police were regarded as brutal and being hauled to the station would

inevitably involve violence.15

Nowadays, I was told, even if the police chief visitedthe village, people would not bother to get up and give him a seat. This was bluff of

course, and when high-ranking police officers did visit Markakasa they were treated

with a certain amount of deference. Importantly, the nature of the fear had changed.

In the past, there had been a very real fear of police violence and a more general

apprehension of the unknown and distant state. Now the state and the police were

far more known and knowable, because of prestige projects such as the BRO road

construction, the establishment of AOPs, and through an active police policy of

closer engagement. As I show below, local police attempted to position themselves

as defenders and advocates of the local population vis-a-vis other local state actorssuch as the sub-district (tahsil) office and the State Tribal Development Corporation

(Adivasi Vikas Mahamandal). However, as my description of the Angadev visit

demonstrates, this knowability raises other fears: how are activities that meet with

official disapproval to be concealed, and what are the consequences of conceal-

ment? I shall return to this question towards the end of the paper.

An example of police ‘engagement’ was the policy of helping villagers in their

dealings with the local administration over the renewal of ration cards.16 Ration

cards are required in order to purchase cheaply priced essentials such as rice, wheat

and kerosene from Government shops. The cards had to be renewed at the sub-district (tahsil) headquarters, some 40 km away, and travelling to this town on

government work tended to be troublesome and expensive, involving repeat

journeys and payment of bribes. These difficulties came to the attention of the

policemen stationed at the AOP at Ramtola as a result of their conversations with

villagers in the course of patrolling. The ranking officer, the PSI, decided that they,

the police, would collect all the ration card applications and submit them en masse

to the tahsil office on behalf of the applicants. The PSI at the time was a young man

in his late twenties called Subhash. Hailing from more prosperous western

Maharashtra, Subhash had seen service in Naxalite-affected areas in the east of the

state for 3 years. A talkative and inquisitive man, his visits to my house during the

course of a patrol always made me slightly uncomfortable: the conversation would

naturally turn to the topic of the Naxalites, and he would gently probe me as to

whether I had heard any news lately or had an encounter with them. Though I

always replied in the negative to both sorts of inquiry, truthfully in the case of the

latter, dishonestly in the former, I would then be anxiously questioned by

Footnote 14 continued

who was a relative of a Markakasa resident, was mistakenly killed by police. The latter then claimed he

was a Naxalite. In fact the police had been pursuing suspected Naxals, had lost them, and then come uponthis man.15 In 1990, the local police beat a Markakasa man so severely that he died of his injuries.16 Another example: the AOP Ramtola organized a meeting for people from the surrounding villages,

where representatives of local government agencies gave presentations explaining the policies available

to assist them in agriculture, education, new livelihoods, and so on.

432 A. Desai

123



Markakasa villagers at the teastall about what I was asked and whether I had said

anything about the jangalwalle. Subhash explained why the police had decided to

help the locals over the ration cards:

That’s what’s good about being at the AOP: you’re in much closer contactwith the local people—we see them everyday at the teashop—and then we

meet people in other villages when we go on patrol. We heard complaints

about how difficult it was to get ration cards renewed. I asked my superiors in

Taluk [the tahsil town] if we could do something to help: it would help the

people but it would also help us [to encourage people to turn against the

Naxalites]. We could show them that the police are friends of the people and

not their enemies. It’s true that the police in this area have behaved badly in

the past so we have to change what people think of us.

In their own minds then, they, the police, had become the protectors of the localpopulace against the petty exploitation perpetrated by local officials. As I mentioned

above, villagers were conscious too of a change in attitude and viewed the police

differently than in the past. On the part of the police, this level of involvement,

which extended beyond the maintenance of order, was indicative of a wider process

of engagement that saw the Adivasi locals as ‘backward’ and in need of a guiding

hand along the path of development and modernity.

One such area is in the combating of what are regarded as superstitious practices,

including disapproval of the use of the Angadev. As we saw earlier in the paper, the

police have been reluctant to grant permission to the visit of Angadev to villages inthe area. A Markakasa man told me the following story of an Angadev visit to a

neighbouring village that took place some 15 years ago.

A group of policemen on patrol happened to pass through the village at a time

when the Angadev was in attendance.17 They asked what the curious looking

structure was and on being told it was a god that had the ability to detect witches,

the policemen began to laugh. They challenged the villagers, saying that witches

were not real and that the Angadev could not detect them; they were examples of

backward superstition, and the Angadev was guided by its bearers, not the other way

round. How could the villagers not see this? No, countered the villagers, the

Angadev has considerable power (shakti): for instance, they suggested, it would not

permit just any person to pick it up. The police took up the challenge but were

unable to lift the deity. What really happened on that occasion is difficult to

determine but the truth of the matter is irrelevant. The man who told me this story

was trying to emphasise the difference in attitude between the local populace and

the police who patrolled in their areas. What is interesting is that the police were

seen as presenting the local populace as bound by superstition and they took on the

role of challenging such erroneous belief.

The police are just one part of a larger class of local state officials and

administrators who see the area in which they have been posted, and the people

17 This is echoed by Sundar (2001: 441), who describes that the fact that a witch had been murdered only

came to the attention of the police in Bastar when they were combing the area in an anti-Naxalite

operation.


123



whom they govern, as fundamentally unmodern and undeveloped in comparison

with western Maharashtra or other parts of Vidarbha (eastern Maharashtra), where

the vast majority of personnel are recruited from. It was constantly impressed upon

me that the people here were uneducated, simple and easily taken advantage of,

unlike people from other parts of the state or country. This brings me back to myearlier point: though witchcraft is, as Macdonald (2004) suggests, widespread

throughout rural (and perhaps urban) India, it is nevertheless associated with

‘backwardness’ in the minds of officials trained in an ideology of ‘modernisation’.

The combination of ‘backward practices’ (witchcraft) performed by paradigmati-

cally ‘backward people’ (Adivasis) provides a potent composite image of

backwardness. The Naxalite insurgency has made certain state actors more urgently

and intimately involved in what they see as the problem of ‘backwardness’: Adivasi

people are seen as ‘simple’ and ‘trusting’—characteristics of their ‘backward-

ness’—which, the police suspect, leads to Adivasi collaboration with the rebels.Official intolerance of a belief in witchcraft and of the corresponding measures

needed to tackle it, and their much closer involvement in people’s lives, means that

villagers and villages that are afflicted by witchcraft and a sense of unease find it

increasingly difficult to use remedies, which would have been effective in the past.

Macdonald’s research on witch accusations and police authority in the Central

Provinces (where Markakasa was located18) in colonial times suggests that, in

contrast to other parts of India, police presence there was minimal and largely

ineffective (2004: 114), and most policing was left to village law agents who

colluded in keeping witchcraft accusations at the level of the village (ibid: 108-14).Even as recently as 60 years ago, at the time of Independence, the police station

with responsibility for Markakasa was in the small town of Sakoli, 80 km away to

the north-west along bullock cart trails through dense forest. As recounted by

elderly villagers, police officers (and others such as forest guards) visited only

sporadically, staying at the abandoned ghotul building once used by village youth,

which came to be known as the sepoy bangla (the soldiers’ house). The Bhandara

District Gazetteer mentions in passing that the southern part of the district (where

Markakasa was located) was ‘‘very jungly and remarkably free from crime’’

(Russell 1908: 171). In 1906, the proportion of police engaged in the detection and

prevention of crime in Bhandara district was one policeman for every 13 sq. miles

and 2,139 persons (ibid). This compared to the all-Central Provinces figures of

9 sq. miles and 1,061 persons, respectively (ibid). So, in 1906, Bhandara district

was less intensively policed than the average district in the Central Provinces,

already itself less covered than other parts of India. By 1968, the figures for the

district were one policeman to 10.13 sq. km and 1,370 persons.19 Thus even in the

late 1960s, this district was less well-covered than the average district in the Central

Provinces at the turn of the twentieth century. One can conclude that the forested

areas of Bhandara district were even less intensively policed than the already rather

18 Markakasa was located in Bhandara District in the Central Provinces. In 1999, Bhandara was split into

two and the eastern portion, containing most of the Adivasi population, became the new district of

Gondia.19 From District Gazetteer (1979) Bhandara District, Maharashtra State (Bombay), p. 580.

434 A. Desai

123



sparsely administered general Central Provinces, as MacDonald demonstrates

(2004: 108-14).

If we examine MacDonald’s evidence of a limited police presence throughout

much of the rural Central Provinces in the light of the historian Ajay Skaria’s

analysis of witchcraft in the Dangs and Mewar in colonial western India, we canmake some speculative observations about the present day. Skaria (1997)

demonstrates how the districts of Mewar and the Dangs differed: whereas the

police and administrative presence in the former was in many respects similar to

that of the rural Central Provinces, the latter was intensely policed and governed

from an early stage. In the Dangs, individual witch killings became more

pronounced as village-wide witch detection was suppressed (ibid: 137). In Mewar,

by contrast, detection conducted by bhagat s (diviners) and others continued, and

witches could be dealt with effectively at the village level (ibid). This resonates with

MacDonald’s contention that in the Central Provinces more generally, news of anti-witch activity very seldom reached the ears of the administration. It may also

account, rather speculatively, for that curious comment in the 1908 Bhandara

District Gazetteer that the ‘jungly’ southern part was crime-free, perhaps indicating

that indeed in this part of the Central Provinces, ‘crimes’ were not being reported

but were dealt with at the village level.

In the erstwhile Central Provinces, the process that took place in the Dangs in the

early part of the twentieth century has only happened more recently with the

expansion of police presence gradually since Independence, and especially in the

past 15 years with the explosion of the Naxalite movement. Not only are the policemore present and accessible, but also public policy and discussion in India (and in

Maharashtra in particular) oppose witchcraft and sorcery practices to the idea of

modernity: detecting and dealing with witches, and employing sorcerers is seen as

hampering India’s emergence as a developed modern nation.20

This has certainly had an effect on how police approach the issue of witchcraft

and witch-detection, and how ordinary people come to be aware that in many

instances their views on witchcraft are at odds with those of other parts of Indian

society. My repeated questions about the fate of witches once they were identified

were met with verbal equivalents of shoulders shrugged. ‘‘What can we do?

Nothing. If we beat them or even have a meeting about them, they can go to the

police station and file a complaint against us. It didn’t used to be like that. The sian

(elders) of the village would tie the person to a tree and beat her to stop her doing

her badmashi (wickedness).’’

This increased awareness of the hostility of the state has also led to the

progressive marginalisation of baiga as identifiers of witches and sorcerers, and thus

to an important impediment to the proper resolution of mystical attack. Apart from

the common complaints about their greed, the most striking disadvantage from the

afflicted person’s point of view is that baiga are no longer willing to disclose the

identity of the attacker for fear of causing disputes. It is only in this sphere of

20 See in particular the activities of the high-profile Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti

(Maharashtra Committee for the Eradication of Superstition) and their sponsorship of a Bill in the

Maharashtra Assembly to criminalise ‘superstitious’ practices such as detecting witches and the use of

sorcerers.


123



suspected magical attack that they show such reticence. In other circumstances, such

as that of trying to divine the whereabouts and identity of a thief, the baiga has no

such qualms about describing the wrongdoer in detail. Baiga have become wary of

identifying witches and opening themselves to possible arrest by the police (who are

more present than ever before) should the victim of magical attack seek a violentremedy.21 Unfortunately, their reluctance to name witches or instigators of sorcery

makes them less satisfying for people who visit them in search of answers about

causation.

And this applies to the use of the Angadev too. Though police were refusing

permission to invite the Angadev, the example of Kondenar demonstrates that a

village, if determined, will ask the deity to visit regardless. The problem appears to

be that villagers cannot take satisfactory measures (expulsion, disciplining, fining)

against any witches identified by the Angadev: they run the risk that the accused

will file a complaint with the police, who are now much more accessible andinvolved in matters of everyday life.

The Maoists and witchcraft

The police in Adivasi areas, and public policy in Maharashtra, have become hostile

to the desire to find and punish witches and the penetration of the former,

particularly through the establishment of AOPs, has increased largely in response to

the Naxalite insurgency. What then of the position of the Naxalites themselvestowards witchcraft? In many other parts of the country and in neighbouring Nepal,

the Maoists take an avowedly anti-witchcraft, anti-superstition line that accords

rather well with what I have described for the local state administration in and

around Markakasa. The Maoists subscribe to a particular vision of modernity that is

in opposition both to the unequal economic and to the social relations of the past,

and the mystifying (and expensive) shackles of ‘religion’ and ‘superstition’.

According to the programme of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (2004), anti-

witchcraft measures, and the use of shamans, diviners and sorcerers, are to be

discouraged and banned in the areas in which they control. Both Shah ( 2006) for

Jharkhand and de Sale (this volume) for Nepal describe the measures introduced by

Maoists to limit the numbers of ritual specialists required for witch-cleansing

rituals, short of banning the rituals altogether. Nevertheless, de Sale demonstrates

the tensions that exist in forbidding such activity: the Peoples Liberation Army’s

desire to win the support of the local populace is in conflict with the newly

appointed Maoist village government cadres anxious to establish their ideological

credentials.

In and around Markakasa, no clear picture emerges. Kondenar village, which

hosted the visit of the Angadev, is locally regarded as completely ‘open’ to the

Naxalites, unlike Markakasa.22 There, because of its relatively isolated position,

21 See also Macdonald (2004), p. 140.22 People used the English word ‘open’. Several other villages in Markakasa’s immediate vicinity were

also regarded as ‘open’. For the most part these were all-Gond villages, again unlike Markakasa.

436 A. Desai

123



dense forest, and all-Gond composition, Naxalites come and go unhindered during

the day as well as the night, and are known by all. One would expect the Naxalites

to have objected to the presence of the Angadev in a village they regard as their

own. Yet, I heard no hint of any such objection, and the Angadev visit went ahead in

any case, with a full accompaniment of baigas and plenty of animal sacrifice.Pragmatism on the part of the local Naxalite squad might explain this: that their

support base may be tenuous and so any ideological prescriptions have to be

disregarded. In Markakasa and the surrounding area, the Naxalites are seen as

promoters and defenders of Gond culture (sanskruti), and for this they are praised

(principally by Gonds themselves, but not exclusively so). In their meetings and

discussions, they encourage Gonds to use Gondi with their children and their

political songs are also all in Gondi. The meeting held in Markakasa in 2001 for

instance, during which a man was badly beaten, was conducted almost entirely in

the Gondi language, and this was remarked on repeatedly in its various retellings tome. Some people were also aware that in other parts of India, Naxalites had set up

schools with Gondi as the language of instruction. Thus, one possible explanation of

why anti-’anti-witchcraft’ is not on the local Naxalite agenda is because it would

contradict a popular assumption that the Naxalites are somehow pro-Gond, not only

as advocates of their economic and political betterment but at a ‘cultural’ level too.

In its capacity as a powerful deity, the Angadev is an important local component of

Gond sanskruti. Perhaps the Naxalites understand, in a way that the police certainly

do not, the role that the Angadev and the baigas play in the regulation, maintenance

and reproduction of local forms of sociality.

Conclusion

It is the disruption of sociality that lies at the heart of the consequences of change

that I have discussed in this article. The trouble caused by witches and by those

employing sorcerers in order to attack others is generally the result of problematic

sociality, often involving disputes with kin or neighbours. Successfully engaging in

other forms of sociality allows one to counter the attack, whether it is by employing

a diviner who trusts you enough to reveal the name of your tormentor, or building a

sufficient consensus in the village in order to pay for an expensive Angadev visit.

However, both these remedies are less satisfying than before and more difficult to

employ, in large part because of the increased presence and accessibility of the state

in general, and of the police in particular.

Unlike the Dangs in the colonial-era, where the suppression of effective non-fatal

village-wide methods of dealing with witchcraft led to an increase in individual

witch killings, there is no evidence of such an increase in this part of Gondia district.

Indeed there are no reported cases of witchcraft related violence in the last 15 years

at all.23 Instead, there has been a tremendous growth in the popularity of a Hindu

23 Interview with the head of ______ Police Station, May 2004.


123



devotional sect ( panth), the Mahanubhavpanth, which people join specifically in

order to deal with attacks of witchcraft and magic. Where 20 years ago there was

not a single devotee in the area, now at least ten percent of households in every

village are adherents.

The panth and its temples are regarded as very efficacious in dealing withmalignant mystical attack. Those in search of healing are required to spend several

weeks in residence at the panth’s temple located a 100 km away, praying, and

learning correct devotional practice. During the course of their stay, and through a

form of possession called byan, God reveals the name of their tormentor, and begins

to fight him/her on behalf of the afflicted person. By seeking relief at the panth’s

temple, and then by joining the sect, Markakasa people attempt to stop the current

magical attack, claim retribution against the witch through the actions of God, and

ensure that any future magical attack against them will be ineffective. Importantly,

the particular relations of sociality that are crucial in the deployment of otherremedies such as baiga or the Angadev become irrelevant: as long as the

Mahanubhav adherent keeps to the tenets of the panth regarding daily worship, diet

and unswerving devotion to God alone, he will be protected from harm. In

combination with other important factors such as changes in land legislation that

make it more difficult for people to escape problematic social relations, other

remedies such as using Angadev or baiga are less attractive because the state

response to witchcraft accusations in the context of the Maoist insurgency has made

them less satisfying.

But the story does not end there. Rising membership of Hindu devotional panthsin villages like Markakasa further jeopardises the use of the Angadev to combat

harm. The requisite consensus to invite it and pay for it becomes more difficult to

achieve, as new devotees no longer have need of the deity. The effects of state

action are thus compounded.

Membership also leads new adherents to see certain practices such as

vegetarianism, teetotalism and daily worship of God as bodily necessary and

morally powerful. Local Hindu nationalist activists in the form of the Vanvasi

Kalyan Ashram (VKA) also promote these practices through their hostels and by

organising visits to the area of sympathetic Hindu holy men-ascetics. This

organisation is part of a larger movement that aims to turn nominally secular India

into an explicitly Hindu state; the VKA’s role is to reinforce the Hindu nature of

groups such as Adivasis whom they regard as vulnerable to the wiles of ‘anti-

national’ Christian missionaries. Those who have embraced these practices for

reasons of protection from harm because of the lack of other measures come to see

the resonances between their own moral projects and the moral project of the Hindu

nationalist movement. The encounter between the state and the Maoists has far-

reaching and unexpected consequences indeed.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank the organizers and participants at the workshop ‘Everyday lifewith Maoism in India and Nepal: anthropological comparisons’, held in September 2007 at which this

paper was first presented. Fieldwork and writing was made possible by funding from the ESRC. My

thanks in particular to Alpa Shah and Judith Pettigrew for their comments and to the people of Markakasa

for their hospitality.

438 A. Desai

123



References

Communist Party of India (Maoist). 2004. Party programme: central committee (P) communist party of

India (Maoist).

Gell, A. 1980. The Gods at play: Vertigo and possession in a Muria village. Man (n.s.) 15: 219–248.

Macdonald, H. 2004. Resolution and rupture: The paradox of violence in witch accusation in

Chhattisgarh, India. University of London, London: SOAS.

Shah, A. 2006. Markets of protection: The ‘terrorist’ Maoist movement and the state in Jharkhand, India.

Critique of Anthropology 26 (3): 297–314.

Singh, P. 1995. The Naxalite movement in India. New Delhi: Rupa and Co.

Sinha, S. 1989. Maoists in Andhra Pradesh. Delhi: Gyan.

Skaria, A. 1997. Women, witchcraft and gratuitous violence in Colonial Western India. Past and Present

155: 109–141.

Sundar, N. 2001. Divining evil: The state and witchcraft in Bastar. Gender, Technology and Development

5 (3): 425–448.


13

Documents

Desai-Maoist Insurgency in MS